Michael Owen emerges from behind yellow plywood swing doors into a nondescript open foyer with a vending machine against the far wall. He strolls out into the bright sun and sharp cold of Las Rozas, 25km northwest of Madrid. He is Real Madrid's latest galáctico, a former European Footballer of the Year, joint top scorer at the world's most ludicrously glamorous club, having hit five goals in seven games, and yet you wouldn't know it as he slips away quietly, almost imperceptibly.

Nor could you find any hint in his face of the impending two weeks that may define his season, starting next Wednesday with England against Spain at the Bernabéu. From there Owen travels to Camp Nou for the world's biggest, most politically charged derby against Barcelona before facing Bayer Leverkusen in a make-or-break Champions League tie.

After a difficult start all appears well in Owen's world, yet there are clouds on the horizon. His goals may not be enough to maintain a hard-won first-team place when David Beckham returns. "I'm the new boy, so I'm not going to complain about being substitute. Maybe if I had been here for four or five years it would be different," he says. His refusal to whinge is laudable but he deserves better.

Owen has always been quietly determined, cool and collected. Yet there is something somehow appropriate about his understated presence in Las Rozas, an indication perhaps that the Englishman is not yet at one with his environment. He is the least galactic of the galácticos, the only one without a guaranteed place; the only one that president Florentino Pérez was unsure of; the only one who doesn't earn galactic wages.

And it shows. At Real's sterile temporary training base, Owen is different. Ronaldo swaggers out, grinning that grin, Roberto Carlos, a bundle of energy with monster thighs, two mobiles swinging from his neck, joins him to an excited babble of interest, high fives and bear hugs. Raúl - always the last one out - Zidane and Figo are quieter, but they register. Even the younger players look like stars in waiting, all tendered hair and designer gear.

Not Owen, despite the famous smile. Pleasant and polite, short and slight, cropped hair, jeans and a jumper, he could, says one member of staff, be the postman, a shop worker, a taxi driver, anything. Just not a footballer. He doesn't demand attention; even some of the gaggle of autograph hunters just watch him go by. Owen is a man apart.

Ask his team-mates what they think of Owen and they all reply that he is timido, shy. But that exterior hides an iron will: Owen talked of escaping the comfort zone in leaving Liverpool and he has been true to his word. As has his club. It speaks volumes of his determination that life in Madrid is going so well. "I didn't come here expecting favours from anyone," Owen says. He has had none. He has earned his success, scoring as many goals as Ronaldo, five in half the time, and more than Raúl or Fernando Morientes. And yet there's no superstar strut; Owen is not a galáctico .

When Beckham signed, the world was watching, a cavalcade racing him through Madrid; when Owen arrived, he found the city shut down. "I've discovered that Spain is different, especially in August," he said, deadpan. Finding a house proved impossible, but that was just one of many challenges - convincing the Madrid fans, their players, manager and president was equally taxing.

Rejected by Thierry Henry, Florentino Pérez went for Owen reluctantly, having turned up his nose at him earlier. Consolation came with his price, a bargain £8m, and his nationality; the cost came in the bullish, bruising form of a furious coach. José Antonio Camacho had promised good "minutes" to Morientes, just returned after a blistering season on loan at Monaco, and contemplated resigning right there. It was not that Camacho did not rate Owen, another presidential imposition, but he didn't have room for him.

If Camacho was angry, so was the captain Raúl, a friend to Morientes and fearful for his own place. Pérez privately told Morientes' and Raúl's entourages not to worry: "The lad [Owen] knows he's coming as a sub." It is hard to imagine Owen accepting such secondary status. If he did, it says much about his self-belief, his conviction that he could earn a place ahead of Raúl and Ronaldo. "I don't expect to walk into the team but I know I'll get a chance and when I do I'm confident of taking it," he said.

If only it were that simple. Raúl sought to undermine him - as he had done with the infinitely more volatile Nicolas Anelka. The only player to hold regular meetings with Camacho, Raúl urged the coach to leave Owen out and, it seemed, refused to pass to him - Owen made runs but was not seen. There appeared to be intention in the myopia and Raúl has used the tactic before, as one previous big summer signing privately confirms. Senior foreign players were irritated by Raúl's behaviour but Owen had few real allies except the president, who pressured Camacho to grant him more "minutes".

When he recognised the limits to his authority, Camacho walked. With his linguistic limitations, the new boy was both blameless and surely ignorant of his centrality to the departure. "Obviously I don't know all their conversations because of the language problem," Owen admitted. "I don't think I was the reason the coach left and I wasn't down," he insists. "If I'd been playing badly maybe I would have been but it was just that I wasn't getting that many chances."

When he did get minutes, he was too eager to impress: "It's difficult to come on 1-0 up: you're desperate to score or do something special, when in fact you should take the ball down into the corner. It's a Catch 22 for me." Yet, in truth, Owen seemed too reluctant to go at people, stuttering, too keen to play easy. And when he did run, he looked like a Subbuteo player, trying to push his way through a ball almost as big as he was.

Attacks in the press followed. "Owen is a junk galáctico ", wrote the AS sports daily's columnist Tomás Roncero. "This newspaper said so on that ill-fated 12 August, that desperate day of self-inflicted pain when Madrid signed Owen, sold [Samuel] Eto'o to Barcelona and missed out on Patrick Vieira. Owen is not Henry. Owen is not Reyes. Owen is not Totti. Owen is not Drogba. Owen is not Adriano. Owen is not Figo. Owen is not Zidane. Let's face it, Owen is not a galáctico. Rafa Benítez cracked open the champagne the day he sold him to Madrid. No, no, no."

Oddly, Roncero didn't recall writing on that "ill-fated 12 August" that "anyone who questions Owen's ability is a cretin".

The turnaround came soon after Camacho's departure. The new coach García Remón, one of the president's men, short-circuited Raúl's power and opened dialogue with the squad. "He went round every one of us individually and said 'I can only pick 11 players and everyone will get their chance'," said Owen. "He put my mind at ease, saying I was part of his plans".

A goal against Dynamo Kiev opened the floodgates; four more followed as García Remón broke the rules by shuffling the pack and pulling out five aces - Raúl, Ronaldo, Figo, Zidane and Owen - in an ultra-aggressive formation. The marketing-mad president was delighted; the Englishman grew sharper, more confident, happier. Everything was coming together.

Having first found a golf course, Owen now has a house in a quiet cul-de-sac in leafy, if dull, La Moraleja, north of Madrid. Beckham lives nearby and Jonathan Woodgate is also moving into the neighbourhood. Owen will leave his Mirasierra hotel this weekend. "It is no coincidence that things are falling into place off the pitch and my performances are improving," he says. "However nice a hotel is, it's not easy to be in a single room with a small child every day. I knew it was going to be difficult, but you've got to bite your lip and get through it."

There are other obstacles, though. Owen is taking Spanish lessons - 8am, pre-training - and shows a willingness to learn. "He's always got his dictionary and his papers with him on the plane," says one team-mate, "but it isn't easy for him." Press conferences are conducted with a translator, although Owen ended his last one with: " Estoy mejorando mi español poco a poco" - my Spanish is improving bit by bit.

"Before every match there is the normal team-talk then me, Santiago Solari or Luis Figo have a team-talk with Michael," says Míchel Salgado, who has a sister-in-law in York and speaks perfect English. Owen is grateful. "Santi is a really nice fellah who speaks more English than the others and has made me feel very welcome. I need to improve my Spanish, though: I'm looking forward to joining in the banter," he says.

Away from the pitch Owen, like Beckham, is looked after by the former Real Madrid basketball player Javier García Coll, who speaks impeccable English. He has also introduced Owen to the Asador Donostiarra, a Basque restaurant and frequent haunt of Madrid players.

Owen, though, goes for visiting friends and family rather than team-mates. He remains apart, too shy to impose himself upon his companions at a club where team meals are few and far between. The galáctico culture has taken its toll, making integration harder. "At my old club we would get together, 18 of us, and have lunch. Here, that's impossible," moans one first-teamer. "If we did that the press would be all over it, inventing reasons why. It would end up in the papers as a galactic dinner, or some rubbish."

Others have complained of coldness in the galáctico era. Iván Helguera says of the new recruits: "They may be great players but they are not your old mates."

Not afforded that semi-institutional support and unable to express himself in Spanish, Owen is quiet, a lively but silent trainer. Beckham has left the new boys to find their feet but while Woodgate's gregariousness and impressive linguistic progress has won over team-mates - "it's like he's from bloody Malaga," says one - Owen is shy, reluctant to impose. "He'd never push in the bread queue or spit his chewing gum out," wrote one columnist. Woodgate has no qualms about asking his team-mates for autographs, Owen would be too embarrassed to take a shirt in for them to sign.

His compañeros are starting to involve him in their routine, though, even if he cannot respond. After he scored his third goal, against Leganés in the Copa del Rey, Owen appeared on the training pitch a couple of minutes after his team-mates, who responded by shouting: "Oi! Get that kid off the pitch! The one who scores all the goals!" Owen has become El Niño or even Wonder Boy. Integration is coming, if slowly. Owen is still the quiet man, but he is now earning respect with his goals.

But are his goals enough? They are, as one Spanish observer put it, "a bit vulgar" for a galáctico, and Alfredo Relaño, editor of AS, spoke for many when he wrote: "Even if he has got a Ballón d'Or and has scored a few goals, Owen hasn't got people excited. He's a darting, sharp striker and a willing runner but his arrival hasn't given Madrid any extra shine. I don't think he's a true galáctico."

Others are. And, ironically, it is the return from injury of one of the few players with whom Owen can converse that threatens his place in the side. Beckham, along with Ronaldo, Raúl and the other galácticos , cannot be dropped - an angry call from the president at the sight of Beckham on the bench proved the final straw for Camacho. Owen is in line to be the unlucky man just as his season enters its most decisive weeks.

García Remón would thus bolster the side, ditching the attacking formation with which he does not seem entirely convinced: he has consistently replaced Owen around the hour in favour of a midfielder and dropped him from the trip to Málaga. Owen scored within 10 minutes of coming on.

As the country's best-selling newspaper, Marca, lamented, what does Owen have to do to secure a place in the starting XI? So far he has done more than enough. Alas, life at Madrid, a club where meritocracy long since made its excuses and left, is never that simple. Perhaps he shouldn't take it so well; Owen certainly deserves better.